Internode has signed a five-year agreement for the Australia-Japan Cable to supply an initial 1.2 Gbps capacity, with an upgrade path to 4.8 Gbps capacity – dual STM-16 – to meet increased demand from its ADSL2+ and ADSL customers. The company will also launch enhanced ADSL1 plans, running up to 8 Mbps, once the new AJC link goes live on January 10, 2007.

The extra capacity is to ensure Internode keeps ahead of customer demand, said Internode managing director Simon Hackett.

"The beauty of the AJC link to the US is that it increases our capacity by 40 per cent – with the ability to more than double it as required – and provides us with route redundancy, via Japan, so our US links become disaster-proof – able to keep working even if an entire cable system fails. It also creates new business opportunities for Internode. We are already looking at creating break-out capacity into Asia via Japan."

The moves comes soon after Internode became the first Australian ISP to offer 2.5 Mbps upload speeds after the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) last month registered ADSL2+ Annex M for use in Australia. Annex M is an international standard to deliver broadband upstream speeds at up to 2.5 Mbps. To date, ADSL2+ services in Australia have used ADSL2+ Annex A, which is limited to an upstream speed of 1 Mbps.{moscomment}